Starting last month, the Stroke Center at Kent Hospital introduced a new stroke support group for stroke survivors and caregivers. The group will meet at the Trowbridge Building, located adjacent to Kent Hospital, in rooms 102/103 the fourth Wednesday of every month to follow.

All members of the community that have survived a stroke, are at risk of stroke or are caregivers for someone who has undergone a stroke are encouraged to attend the meetings starting at 1 p.m. and running to 2:30 p.m.

Kent Hospital has also received the Get With The Guidelines®–Stroke Gold Plus Quality Achievement Award from the American Heart Association for the third consecutive year. This award recognizes Kent Hospital’s commitment and success in implementing a higher standard of care by ensuring that stroke patients receive treatment according to nationally accepted guidelines.

Get With The Guidelines–Stroke helps hospital staff develop and implement acute and secondary prevention guideline processes to improve patient care and outcomes. The program provides hospitals with a web-based patient management tool, best practice discharge protocols and standing orders, along with a robust registry and real-time benchmarking capabilities to track performance. The quick and efficient use of guideline procedures can improve the quality of care for stroke patients and may reduce disability and save lives.

“Kent Hospital is dedicated to making our care for stroke patients among the best in the country and the American Heart Association’s Get With The Guidelines–Stroke program helps us to accomplish this goal,” Sandra Coletta, COO Care New England, president and CEO of Kent Hospital said in a release. “This recognition demonstrates that we are providing high quality patient care to our community and for that we are very proud of our team.”

“Recent studies show that patients treated in hospitals participating in the American Heart Association’s Get With The Guidelines-Stroke program receive a higher quality of care and may experience better outcomes,” said Lee H. Schwamm, M.D., chair of the Get With The Guidelines National Steering Committee and director of the TeleStroke and Acute Stroke Services at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, Mass. “Kent Hospital’s team is to be commended for their commitment to improving the care of their patients.”

Following Get With The Guidelines-Stroke treatment guidelines, patients are started on aggressive risk-reduction therapies, including the use of medications such as tPA, antithrombotics and anticoagulation therapy, along with cholesterol reducing drugs and smoking cessation counseling. These are all aimed at reducing death and disability and improving the lives of stroke patients. Hospitals must adhere to these measures at a set level for a designated period of time to be eligible for the achievement awards.

Stroke is one of the leading causes of death and serious, long-term disability in the United States. On average, someone suffers a stroke every 40 seconds; someone dies of a stroke every four minutes; and 795,000 people suffer a new or recurrent stroke each year.